<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!--
                                                                                     
 h       t     t                ::       /     /                     t             / 
 h       t     t                ::      //    //                     t            // 
 h     ttttt ttttt ppppp sssss         //    //  y   y       sssss ttttt         //  
 hhhh    t     t   p   p s            //    //   y   y       s       t          //   
 h  hh   t     t   ppppp sssss       //    //    yyyyy       sssss   t         //    
 h   h   t     t   p         s  ::   /     /         y  ..       s   t    ..   /     
 h   h   t     t   p     sssss  ::   /     /     yyyyy  ..   sssss   t    ..   /     
                                                                                     
	<https://y.st./>
	Copyright © 2015 Alex Yst <mailto:copyright@y.st>

	This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
	it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
	the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
	(at your option) any later version.

	This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
	but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
	MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
	GNU General Public License for more details.

	You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
	along with this program. If not, see <https://www.gnu.org./licenses/>.
-->
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
	<head>
		<base href="https://y.st./en/weblog/2015/09-September/26.xhtml"/>
		<title>Telephony is obsolete &lt;https://y.st./en/weblog/2015/09-September/26.xhtml&gt;</title>
		<link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="/link/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./icon.png"/>
		<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/link/main.css"/>
		<script type="text/javascript" src="/script/javascript.js"/>
		<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width"/>
	</head>
	<body>
<nav>
	<p>
		<a href="/en/coursework/">Coursework</a> |
		<a href="/en/take-down/">Take-down requests</a> |
		<a href="/en/">Home</a> |
		<a href="/en/a/about.xhtml">About</a> |
		<a href="/en/a/contact.xhtml">Contact</a> |
		<a href="/a/canary.txt">Canary</a> |
		<a href="/en/URI_research/"><abbr title="Uniform Resource Identifier">URI</abbr> research</a> |
		<a href="/en/opinion/">Opinions</a> |
		<a href="/en/law/">Law</a> |
		<a href="/en/recipe/">Recipes</a> |
		<a href="/en/a/links.xhtml">Links</a> |
		<a href="/en/weblog/2015/09-September/26.xhtml.asc">{this page}.asc</a>
	</p>
	<hr/>
	<p>
		Weblog index:
		<a href="/en/weblog/memories">Memories</a> |
		<a href="/en/weblog/"><abbr title="American Standard Code for Information Interchange">ASCII</abbr> calendars</a> |
		<a href="/en/weblog/index_ol_ascending.xhtml">Ascending list</a> |
		<a href="/en/weblog/index_ol_descending.xhtml">Descending list</a>
	</p>
	<hr/>
	<p>
		Jump to entry:
		<a href="/en/weblog/2015/03-March/07.xhtml">&lt;&lt;First</a>
		<a rel="prev" href="/en/weblog/2015/09-September/25.xhtml">&lt;Previous</a>
		<a rel="next" href="/en/weblog/2015/09-September/27.xhtml">Next&gt;</a>
		<a href="/en/weblog/latest.xhtml">Latest&gt;&gt;</a>
			</p>
			<hr/>
</nav>
		<header>
			<h1>Telephony is obsolete</h1>
			<p>Day 00203: <time>Saturday, 2015 September 26</time></p>
		</header>
<p>
	I don&apos;t know why, but my mother asked me to call U-Haul by telephone to get some prices.
	She knows very well that I always find a non-telephone way to retrieve information.
	I simply can&apos;t stand making unnecessary telephone calls.
	But more importantly for today, she knows that the only telephone at my disposal is a land line, the land line at home that saves us one cent each moth on our cable bill, a line that we wouldn&apos;t even have if it was costing us anything.
	As we were away from home, I could not reach that telephone and had no way to carry out her request.
</p>
<p>
	As she should have expected, I hit the Web to get the information she wanted.
	The U-Haul website is set up very stupidly though.
	The automated system will not give you a price unless you specify a location you are renting from, a location you are returning the rented parts to, and a date upon which you wish to carry out the rental.
	The first two seem reasonable, and actually effect the price, but there&apos;s no reason to need to pick a date.
	As I am not the one choosing the date, I wasn&apos;t able to give an honest answer to the date question, and I couldn&apos;t be 100% sure that the date wasn&apos;t needed.
	So, I contacted U-Haul Web support.
	Again, no telephone needed.
	I&apos;m not sure why people, especially my mother, insist that <strong>*anything*</strong> need be carried out by telephone.
	Web support did not even ask for a date of rental, and best of all, there was no need to try to remember the prices long enough to write them down, try to keep up with what the customer support representative was saying as I try to write down what was just said, ask the representative to pause a bit so I could take notes, or struggle to make out what was being said over a potentially-poor connection.
	Instead, I was able to wait until the representative left and copy the log containing everything that was said directly to my notes.
	In what way does that not completely trump telephony as a method of information retrieval? I honestly don&apos;t understand why anyone would choose to use a telephone when when this is so much easier.
</p>
<p>
	Hover support wrote back, saying that they could not find my account, so I should give them my user name to help them locate it.
	They also said that a telephone number is mandatory for use of their services.
	I gave them the user name and reiterated that I do not have a telephone, then asked if that means that they are unable to sell me domains.
	Hopefully they will write back and I&apos;ll see what becomes of the situation.
</p>
<p>
	We left for home, but I forgot two things in Springfield.
	First, I left behind the power strip I had wanted to bring home to use with my new desktop computer setup.
	Once I have a power strip, I&apos;ll be able to set up my old server as a desktop workstation.
	Second, I left behind the hat I wore when I left Coos Bay.
	Luckily, I have other hats, but that one is my favorite.
	I&apos;ll get it back soon enough though, I&apos;m sure.
</p>
<p>
	My <a href="/a/canary.txt">canary</a> still sings the tune of freedom and transparency.
</p>
		<hr/>
		<p>
			Copyright © 2015 Alex Yst;
			You may modify and/or redistribute this document under the terms of the <a rel="license" href="/license/gpl-3.0-standalone.xhtml"><abbr title="GNU&apos;s Not Unix">GNU</abbr> <abbr title="General Public License version Three or later">GPLv3+</abbr></a>.
			If for some reason you would prefer to modify and/or distribute this document under other free copyleft terms, please ask me via email.
			My address is in the source comments near the top of this document.
			This license also applies to embedded content such as images.
			For more information on that, see <a href="/en/a/licensing.xhtml">licensing</a>.
		</p>
		<p>
			<abbr title="World Wide Web Consortium">W3C</abbr> standards are important.
			This document conforms to the <a href="https://validator.w3.org./nu/?doc=https%3A%2F%2Fy.st.%2Fen%2Fweblog%2F2015%2F09-September%2F26.xhtml"><abbr title="Extensible Hypertext Markup Language">XHTML</abbr> 5.2</a> specification and uses style sheets that conform to the <a href="http://jigsaw.w3.org./css-validator/validator?uri=https%3A%2F%2Fy.st.%2Fen%2Fweblog%2F2015%2F09-September%2F26.xhtml"><abbr title="Cascading Style Sheets">CSS</abbr>3</a> specification.
		</p>
	</body>
</html>

